"Syl! Listen, you're thinking with my brain, and I can sense something! Like every time I suggested something we could do, I got drenched in some kind of sadness. And there's a feeling like a big thing tickling when you won't talk. You've got to tell me, Syl. What is it?"
"I …oh, I am so ashamed!"
"See, there is something you're hiding! Ashamed of what? Go on, Syl, tell me or I'll — I'll bash us both. Tell me!"
"Ashamed," repeats the small voice. "I'm afraid, I'm afraid. My training. …Maybe I'm not so completely developed as I thought. I don't know how to stop— Ohhh," Coati's voice wails. "I wish my mentor were here!"
"Huh?"
"I have this feeling. Oh, dear Coati Cass, it is increasing; I can't suppress it!"
"What? …Don't tell me you're about to have some kind of primitive fit? Did that mating business—?"
"No. Well, maybe, yes. Oh, I can't—"
"Syl, you must."
"No. All will be well. I will recollect all my training and recover myself."
"Syl, this sounds terrible. …But, face it, you're all alone—we're all alone. You can't mate, if that's what's coming over you."
"I know. But—"
"Then that's it. The sooner we get going, the sooner we'll be at FedBase and you can start home. I was going to take a nice nap first, but if you've got troubles, maybe I better just go right into the chest. Couldn't you try to sleep, too? You might wake up feeling better."
"Oh, no! Oh, no! Not the cold! It stimulates us."
"Yes, I forgot. But look, I can't live through all those light-years awake!"
"No — not the cold-sleep!"
"Syl. Myr Syllobene. Maybe you better confess the whole thing right now. Just what are you afraid of?"
"But I'm not sure—"
"You're sure enough to be glooming for days. Now you tell Coati exactly what you're afraid of. Take a deep breath — here, I'll do it for you — and start. Now!"
"Perhaps I must," the alien voice says, small but newly resolute. "I don't remember if I told you: If the mating cycle overtakes us when an Eea is alone, we can still …reproduce. By — I know your word — spores. Just like seeds, only they are all identical with the parent. And the Eea grows them and gives birth like seeds, as you saw. Then the Eea comes back to itself." Syl's words are coming in a rush now, as from relief at speaking out. "It's very rare, because of course we are taught to stop it when the feeling begins. I–I never had it before. I'm supposed to seek out my mentor at once, to be instructed how to stop it, or the mentor will visit the young one and make it stop. But my mentor is far away! I keep hoping this is not really the feeling that begins all that, but it won't go a,way; it's getting stronger. Oh, Coati, my friend, I am so afraid — so fearful—" The voice trails off in great sobs.
The Coati voice says, slowly, "Oh, whew. You mean, you're afraid you're going to be grabbed by this mating thing and make spores in my head? And they'll bore a hole?"
"Y-yes." The alien is in obvious misery.
"Wait a minute. Will it make you go crazy and stop being you, like a Human who gets intoxicated? Oh, you couldn't know about that. But you'll act like those untrained young ones? I mean, what will you do?"
"I may — eat blindly. Oh-h-h …don't leave me alone in your cold-sleep!"
"Well. Well. I have to think."
Click — the deputy has halted the machine.
"I thought we should take a minim to appreciate this young woman's dilemma, and the dilemma of the alien."
The xenobiologist sighs. "This urge, or cycle is evidently not so very rare, since instructions are given to the young to combat it. Instructions that unfortunately depend on the mentor being available. But it doesn't appear to be a normal part or stage of maturing — more like an accidental episode. I suggest that here it was precipitated by the experience with the two Humans infected by untrained young. That awakened what the Eea seem to regard as part of their primitive system."
"How fast can they get back to that Eea planet, ah, Nolian?" someone asks.
"Not fast enough, I gather," Exec says. "Even if she took the heroic measure of traveling without cold-sleep."
"She's got to get rid of that thing!" Coati's father bursts out. "Cut into her own head and pull it out if she has to! Can't somebody get to her and operate?"
He is met by the silence of negation. The moments they are hearing passed, for good or ill, long back.
"The alien said it could leave," the deputy observes. "We will see if that solution occurs to them." He clicks on.
As if echoing him, Coati's voice comes in. "I asked Syl if she could pull out and park somewhere comfortable until the fit passed. But she says — tell them, Syl."
"I have been trying to withdraw for some time. Early on, I could have done so easily. But now the strands of my physical being have been penetrating so very deeply into Coati's brain, into the molecular and — is atomic the word? — atomic structure. So I have attempted to cut loose from portions of myself, but whenever I succeed in freeing one part, I find that the part I freed before has rejoined. I–I have not had much instruction in this technique, not since I was much smaller. I seem to have grown greatly while with Coati. Nothing I try works. Oh, oh, if only another Eea were here to help! I would do anything, I'd cut myself in half—"
"It's a god-cursed cancer," Coati's father growls. He perceives no empathetic young alien, but only the threat to his child.
"But dear Coati Cass, I cannot. And there is no mistake now; the primitive part of myself that contains this dreadful urge is growing, growing, although I am fighting it as well as I can. I fear it will soon overwhelm me. Is there not something you can do?"
"Not for you, Syl. How could I? But tell me — after it's all passed, and you've, well, eaten my brains out, will you come back to yourself and be all right?"
"Oh — I could never be all right, knowing I had murdered you! Killed my friend! My life would be a horrible thing. Even if my people accepted me, I could not. I mean this, Coati Cass."
"H'mm. Well. Let me think." The recorder clicks off — on. Coati's voice comes back. "Well, the position is: If we carry out our plan to go back to FedBase, I'll be a zombie, or dead, when I get there, and you'll be miserable. And the ship'll be full of spores. I wouldn't be able to land it, but somebody'd probably manage to intercept us. And the people who opened it would get infected with your spores, and by the time things got cleared up, a lot of Humans would have died, and maybe nobody would feel like taking you back to your planet. Ugh."
The alien voice echoes her.
"On the other hand, if we cut straight for Nolian, even at the best, you'd have made spores and they'd have chewed up my brains and it'd be impossible for me to bring the ship down and let you out. So you'd be locked up with a dead Human and a lot of spores, flying on to gods know where, forever. Unless somebody intercepted us, in which case the other scenario would take over. …Syi, I don't see any out. What I do see is that this ship will soon be a flying time bomb, just waiting for some non-Eea life to get near it."
"Yes. That is well put, Coati-my-friend," the small voice says sadly. "Oh!"
"What?"
"I felt a strong urge to — to hurt you. I barely stopped it. Oh, Coati! Help! I don't want to become a wild beast!"
"Syl, honey …it's not your fault. I wonder, shouldn't we sort of say our good-byes while we can?"
"I see… I see."
"Syllobene, my dear, whatever happens, remember we were great friends, and had adventures together, and saved each other's lives. And if you do something bad to me, remember I know it isn't really you; it's just an accident because we're so different. I… I've never had a friend I loved more, Syl. So good-bye, and remember it all with joy if you can."